Standoff suggests Senate would give up on climate change law that would result in far more limited proposals

Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 June 2010

Barack Obama’s hopes of leveraging public anger at the Gulf oil spill into political support for his clean energy agenda fell flat today after he failed to rally a group of Democratic and Republican senators around broad energy and climate change law.

The standoff suggests the Senate would formally give up on climate change law, and recast energy reform as a Gulf oil spill response, that would roll in far more limited proposals such as a green investment bank, or a measure to limit greenhouse gas emissions that would apply only to electricity companies.

Such a move would come as a personal rebuff to Obama who has put energy and climate change at the top of his agenda, and who called on the 23 senators at the White House meeting to establish a cap and trade system.

“The president was very clear about putting a price on carbon and limiting greenhouse gas emissions,” John Kerry, the Democratic senator leading the push for climate change proposals in the Senate said after the meeting.

“He was very strong about the need to put a price on carbon and make polluters pay,” said senator Joe Lieberman.

White House officials say the spill is a wake-up call for the urgency of breaking the US economy’s dependence on fossil fuels, and had hoped to build momentum behind a cap-and-trade bill now before the Senate.

Supporters of action on climate change had been pressing Obama to make a strong push for legislation.

The oil disaster’s ability to dictate events was underlined again today when BP and the coast guard suspended oil skimming operations because of rough seas from tropical storm Alex.

Senators at the much-anticipated meeting acknowledged there was political support only for modest reforms.

Kerry told reporters he was prepared to scale back his proposals.

“We are prepared to scale back the reach of our legislation in order to try and find that place of compromise because we believe and I think the president believes very strongly that what is important for America to get started,” The Hill website quoted him saying.

Republican Senators, even those purportedly supporting energy reform, have been adamant in their opposition to putting an economy-wide price on carbon. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican at the meeting, told reporters such moves would be too costly for the average family.

Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said Congress needed to focus on the spill.

“Priority one, two and three for any meeting on energy is to make sure we give the president whatever he needs to clean up the oil spill and to help people who are hurt and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The stand-off suggests the Senate will now try to roll energy proposals into a broader Gulf-oil-spill bill that would impose tougher offshore drilling regulations, and higher penalties for oil companies.

The Senate is expected to take up such a bill soon after the 4 July break. But energy proposals could still be in the mix.

Among the measures gaining in support is the establishment of a clean energy deployment administration, or a green bank. The bank would offer direct financing as well as loan guarantees to new energy infrastructure, energy efficiency and manufacturing technology.

The Senate version of the proposals would also extend such loan guarantees to nuclear industry as well as carbon capture and storage projects.

Another key proposal would be a pilot project for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity plants.

See more here.

By Robert Mendick

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.

Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK’s energy needs in the future. They claim that the ‘intermittent’ nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.

The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.

The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution - known as the ‘balancing mechanism’ - is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.

The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid - and ultimately consumers - far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative ‘green’ subsidies for that electricity.

The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received 13,000 pounds for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.

Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid 15 to 20 pounds per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid 180 pounds per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.

It raises the prospect of hugely profitable electricity suppliers receiving large sums of money from the National Grid just for switching off wind turbines.

Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: “As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong.”

Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than 1 billion pounds a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.

The proceeds of the levy, known as the Renewables Obligation (RO), are divided between the main renewable energy sources, with wind receiving 40 per cent, landfill gas 25 per cent, biomass 20 per cent, hydroelectric 12 per cent and sewage gas 3 per cent.

Professor Michael Laughton, emeritus professor of electrical engineering at the University of London, said: “People will find it very hard to understand that an electricity company is getting paid the market rate plus a subsidy for doing nothing. It is essentially a waste of consumers’ money.”

A National Grid spokesman said: “The trial demonstrates that wind can help balance supply and demand just like other generation types: this is potentially useful to us on warm but windy summer days when generation outstrips the low demand - and a higher proportion of generation is made up of wind and inflexible nuclear.”

The spokesman added: “The trial is something supporters of wind energy should welcome, as it gives evidence to their case that wind generation does not bring insurmountable problems to balancing supply and demand.”

A spokesman for RenewableUK, the trade body which represents the renewable energy industry, said all suppliers to the National Grid periodically were asked to reduce output to control the balancing mechanism. He said it was simply evidence of the growing part wind energy had to play in Britain’s supply needs that turbines would occasionally be taken off the National Grid. He added: “REF exists to misrepresent any piece of information and turn it into a scandal or crisis. The reality is the National Grid’s job is to ensure we have adequate capacity to meet demand at any one time.” Read more here.

TOKYO, Japan, June 20, 2010 (ENS) - Two prominent climate scientists - one from Great Britain and one from the United States - have been are the winners of the 2010 Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award which is considered to be Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Robert Watson, chief scientific adviser of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and chair of environmental science and science director at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the University of East Anglia, was named as one awardee in a ceremony in Tokyo on Thursday.

Dr. James Hansen, director at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he has worked since 1967, and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, was named as the other awardee.

Each recipient is presented with a certificate of merit, a commemorative trophy and an award of 50 million yen (US$550,600 or 372,000 pounds).

Watson and Hansen will receive their awards on October 26 in Tokyo, where they will each give a commemorative lecture.

The prize, first awarded in 1992, is sponsored by the Asahi Glass Foundation. It goes to individuals or organizations with outstanding achievements in applied scientific research who have helped to solve global environmental problems.

A total of 800 nominators from Japan and 1,200 nominators from other countries recommended 105 candidates for the 2010 prize.

Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, the former president of the University of Tokyo who headed the selection committee, said both men have extended “basic scientific findings into the realm of public policy.”

Professor Watson was chosen because of his significant part in providing scientific evidence for the depletion of the ozone layer in the 1980s, leading to the Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs, and for his more recent role in bringing together science and policy to protect the global climate, as a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor Watson said, “I would like to thank the Asahi Glass Foundation and its selection committee for the incredible honor of awarding me the 2010 Blue Planet Prize, which has been bestowed in previous years on a group of truly outstanding scientists and policymakers. It is a particular honor to receive it in the same year as James Hansen who has played a critical role in the climate change debate.”

Moonrise over Planet Earth as photographed from the Space Shuttle, December 1990. (Photo courtesy NASA)

Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to limit the impacts of climate change.

He developed a practical climate model that has been proven by abundant weather observation data, and he pioneered the understanding and forecasting of the Earth’s climate system. He predicted global warming in the future based on the climate model.

In determining responsibility for climate change, Hansen has said that the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate is not determined by current emissions, but by accumulated emissions over the lifetime of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Hansen has called for putting fossil fuel company executives, including the chief executives of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal, on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature,” on the grounds that these and other fossil-fuel companies have spread doubt and misinformation about global warming, in the same way that tobacco companies tried to hide the link between smoking and cancer.

During the administration of George W. Bush, Hansen said the White House edited climate-related press releases reported by federal agencies to make global warming seem less threatening. He claimed that he was unable to speak freely about the results of his research.

In a 2004 presentation at his alma mater, the University of Iowa, Hansen announced that he was told by high-ranking government officials not to talk about how human activities could have a dangerous effect on climate.

Hansen has called on President Barack Obama to abolish mountaintop coal mining and has demonstrated against the practice.

In 2009, Hansen told “The Guardian” newspaper, “The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.”

In 2009, Hansen wrote in a blog post, “Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for rapid changes with effects that would be irreversible - if we do not promptly slow fossil fuel emissions during the next few decades.”

“Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming,” he wrote. “As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.”

“We already have caused atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase from 280 to 387 parts per million. What science has revealed in the past few years is that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the long run is no more than 350 ppm,” Hansen wrote. “The optimum CO2 level to support civilization may be less than 350 ppm, but more precise knowledge is not needed immediately for the purpose of establishing present policies.”

Dr. Watson has investigated atmospheric science issues including ozone depletion, global warming and paleoclimatology.

Although British, Watson worked for many years in the United States and his career has been built on both science and policy. He served as environmental adviser to the Clinton administration.

Watson is a former chief scientist with the World Bank and headed the bank’s Environment Department in the 1990s. He chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002 and was Board co-chair for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment from 2000 to 2005.

“I have been fortunate to have worked with many of the world’s best scientists on issues such as stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, and more recently biodiversity loss and sustainable agriculture,” said Watson. “These issues are not only environmental issues, but of importance to poverty alleviation, economic development and human security.”

In 1992, the year of the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Asahi Glass Foundation established the Blue Planet Prize, “in the hopes of encouraging efforts to bring about the healing of the Earth’s fragile environment.”

The Foundation says the name of the award was inspired by the remark “the Earth was blue,” uttered by the first human in space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

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